


Putting on a Show

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Fluff, In a way, M/M, School Play, Ultimate Talent Development Plan (Dangan Ronpa)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16641792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Shuichi Saihara and his boyfriend Kokichi Oma have been recruited to help with the Ultimate Actress's school musical project.





	1. Already Got the Part

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! I hope you're having a great day... And I ALSO hope you have fun with this fic, if you read it! :D Sorry for anything I got wrong.

Maybe Shuichi Saihara shouldn’t have been surprised when the Ultimate Actress approached his boyfriend during lunch one day, eyes bright as paparazzi camera flashes and a school play audition form in her hand.  Kokichi _was_ a pretty dramatic guy, who could swap from shaky-voiced fake tears to cackling without even really seeming to think about it.  He looked over the audition stuff with his face nice and blank, grape-syrup eyes steady, tapping a bottle of Panta gently against his cheek like a supervillain stroking his pointed goatee.

They were eating by the fountains, just then, ‘cause it was nice outside and Kokichi’d wanted to spread out a Yu-Gi-Oh! card game over the ground.  Shuichi had been winning that particular “duel” right before the Ultimate Actress sidled up to them, though he’d always suspected Kokichi just decided to play less aggressively, sometimes.  Probably to see what Shuichi would do, left to his own devices.  Shuichi thought it was kind of sweet that Kokichi would even wonder about stuff like that, honestly.  It was a little like how Kokichi sat through those insect documentaries to understand his lab partner the Ultimate Entomologist better, despite how he squirmed and laughed nervously even just thinking too seriously about bugs…  Or maybe like how Kokichi slid into conversations just to steer them away from the “getting criminals locked up forever and ever – or worse” aspect of Shuichi’s Ultimate Detective talent, after he learned why Shuichi edged around his own skills so carefully.  After Shuichi confided in him, one day, on the floor slumped behind his uncle’s detective office desk when he’d just felt pushed too far.

Something bad could’ve happened, telling the Ultimate Supreme Leader about how awful it had been when Shuichi’d realized his detective work ruined someone’s life, way back when.  Saying all that had been kind of like handing Kokichi a bandolier of stink bombs and steering him towards the school cafeteria.  A perfect weapon to use against Shuichi, if he’d wanted to.  But instead, Kokichi had slipped Shuichi’s hat off – it had been pulled low, hiding his burning eyes – and propped it on his own head at a goofy, jaunty angle.  He’d trotted over and flipped the detective office’s sign to “Closed.”  So what if Uncle Saihara had asked his little protégé to hold down the shop?  Pfft.  If anyone asked, Kokichi would just say he forced Shuichi into locking up with some kinda threat.  “Play games with me right this second or pay an unspeakable price!  Nee-heehee!”  Easy-peasy.

It had mattered a lot more to assure Shuichi that they would use his talents for _good_ , right then, and that he was about as far from the “bad guy” of the story as anyone Kokichi’d ever met.  And yeah, Kokichi had assured Shuichi he was probably lying right away, but…  Heh.  He couldn’t hide how much he cared about the people around him, after all this time.  It felt like Kokichi noticed his friends and “faithful subjects” – his words, not Shuichi’s of course – more than most people probably knew how to, actually, and carried around little details about everybody like winning cards shoved up his sleeves.  And all that _could’ve_ been part of some plan to manipulate everybody, sure.  Right.  That’s what most people would expect from the Ultimate Supreme Leader.  That’s what Kokichi would count on them expecting, for most of his jokes to hit home.

But Shuichi had met Kokichi’s gang, D.I.C.E. – they’d swung by to pick Kokichi up from school one day out of the blue, and Kokichi’d deliberated for only a couple seconds before dragging Shuichi along.  He’d seen firsthand how devoted they were.  How completely they trusted in Kokichi Oma to stick up for them and lead them right…  To have their backs and show them a good time.  To be good enough at genuinely leading people that you got declared an “Ultimate” …  Shuichi thought something like that had to mean more than putting on a good tyrannical act, or being able to climb all over people to get what you wanted.  Being the sort of leader Kokichi tried his best to be for D.I.C.E. took a lot of giving.  Generosity and concern behind the cackling diabolical act, behind the slippery smiles and lies upon lies upon lies.

And so…  Yeah, it was with that same giving side that Kokichi nodded along with the Ultimate Actress’s explanation of her play.  It would be a musical; the costumes would be designed by the Ultimate Cosplayer, Tsumugi Shirogane; the whole thing would take place on a ruined alien desert moon because Tsumugi had recently watched an anime sort of like that and felt Very Inspired.  Shuichi could tell Kokichi was listening through all this very carefully, trying to put the puzzle pieces together.  Trying to figure out his role, here…  Which, actually, it turned out the Ultimate Actress had all lined up and waiting for him before she’d even gotten the audition forms printed out.

Shuichi probably shouldn’t have been surprised about all that, either.  Apparently, the Ultimate Actress’d had it in her mind for a while now that Kokichi should play the corrupt prince of that dying world, a sniggering sort of villain with space pirate-y boots and some excellent comic relief moments.  Kokichi was just so hard to track down on campus, she said – he was always running off somewhere or disappearing into the air vents or something.  Just like the character she had in mind for him to play, really – _he_ winked at the audience before doing terrible stuff, and even his closest advisors were scared of ticking him off.  See?  Didn’t Kokichi just love all that?

The Ultimate Actress painted them a little picture, here.  She described Kokichi sending troops to hunt the heroes through Tsumugi’s desert moon wastelands, with special-effect mutated slime monsters rigged up by the Ultimate Mechanic at his beck and call.  Had the prince himself transformed his own soldiers, robbing them off their humanity and leaving them to drown eternally in lots of squirming goo-tendrils?  Probably.  Sure.  She described Kokichi tapping some poison out of a glittery vial into the water supply, kicking his feet playfully as he balanced along the edge of the well and issued his demands.  She said the role probably wouldn’t be that different from Kokichi’s actual life, if all the rumors she’d heard about him were true, and that her play really, _really_ had to succeed because the former Ultimate Actress would be in the audience too and, well…  Well, that meant she had to put together something special, didn’t it?  She had to prove she belonged, and that she wasn’t gonna make a title like the one they shared look bad.

Shuichi knew Kokichi was going to give his very best to this play, even when he put on a show of rolling his eyes and snickering into his hand about how pathetic it was that the Ultimate Actress had come crawling to him for help…  Even when he hinted like he was going to refuse unless she sold herself over to his infamous organization right away.  You know, the one with over ten thousand members across the world, calling all the fancy, important shots from behind the scenes.  The one that could watch the earth go up in smoke if Kokichi decided he just sort of felt like it one day.  If he stubbed his toe one too many times, or his Frappuccino came out wrong, or the play he was in didn’t end up being enough fun.

“Oh well,” Kokichi chirped, in the end.  He tossed a conspiratorial glance over to Shuichi and shrugged.  It was pretty amazing that he could manage to look so genuinely diabolical waving around a handful of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, but Kokichi’d nailed it.  The Ultimate Actress had crumpled up the rest of her school play audition forms against her chest, wrapping her arms around herself.  She’d taken a few subconscious steps back, and was looking at Kokichi like he might whip a mysterious demolition device or something out of his coat at any second.  “I guess it never hurts to give something a try!  Count me in for your play thingy, okay?  I’ll definitely make rehearsal, uh – ” …  Kokichi consulted the audition form she’d given him, here…  “On Friday, at four-thirty sharp.  Unless I’m lying, obviously.”

The Ultimate Actress looked simultaneously relieved and terrified, and her voice came out very softly when she asked when exactly Kokichi would send his men to perform the blood-bond rituals and/or burn the brand of his organization into her back.  Kokichi grinned cryptically at first, and then laughed.

“Oh, I dunno.   Maybe I’ll go easy on you, this time.  I’ve never been invited to be in an actual play before, so…”

Shuichi thought he knew Kokichi was plotting out ways to make sure the production succeeded, right about then; Shuichi thought he knew Kokichi was imagining how he could help this Ultimate Actress feel safer in her own role.  In her own skin.  The number of times he’d seen Kokichi sneakily build people up was honestly a big part of the reason Shuichi couldn’t fall asleep at night until Kokichi texted that he was either A.) home safe from whatever he and D.I.C.E. had been up to or B.) still definitely not arrested or dead and having a great time.

Kokichi knew Shuichi would lie awake worrying about him, on nights he and D.I.C.E. were out painting the town in harlequin patterns – playing pranks and stealing little things from jerkwads and quite possibly challenging people to play Very Serious games for high stakes Kokichi made up off the top of his head.  Kokichi had figured that out without Shuichi saying a single word about it, and he usually sent pictures of himself wearing his plastic clown mask or grinning wildly or – one time – precariously juggling bottles of Panta until…  In the next picture…  One of them splattered open over his head and a few of his D.I.C.E. teammates were caught cackling in the background.  Kokichi aimed for pictures that would make Shuichi scoff at him, it seemed like, and maybe text that he had better not get himself into _too_ much trouble.  They were pictures no one else outside of D.I.C.E. would ever get to see, he knew…  Pictures Kokichi had learned to trust him with, slowly.  Slowly, the way you might turn a riddle over and over in your head, tugging at loose threads of thought until it all unraveled.

When a few D.I.C.E. members let it slip that Kokichi Oma was essentially the Ultimate Supreme Leader of Clowns – nothing more and nothing less, a prankster and a wildcard and _definitely not a murderer_ , or even as well-versed in torture as he liked people to think – Shuichi had grabbed his hand and held on so tightly Kokichi hadn’t known what to say.  No witty lies left, in that moment, and no snappy jokes or teasing.  Just a quiet reminder that this was a secret back at Hope’s Peak Academy, murmured into Shuichi’s ear.  _“Got it, Shuichi?  Geez, don’t make such a big deal out of all this – did you really think I was an actual supervillain?”_

They’d gone on a few very confusing dates, by that point, and Shuichi hadn’t been able to explain how much knowing Kokichi’s secret mattered to him.  He’d been so relieved, and Kokichi’s hand had been so warm.  So gentle, awkwardly ruffling Shuichi’s hair.

Before the Ultimate Actress cleared her throat and summoned up a little swagger back into her walk, heading over to her pack of friends and – presumably? – the rest of her play-related preparations, Shuichi had somehow been roped into working on set design for the big show, too.  Not that he was too upset about that, mind you.  He and Kokichi were going to be painting a crumbling desert-world shantytown together under the Ultimate Artist’s direction, it sounded like, practicing Kokichi’s lines back and forth as they went.

It would probably take a lot of the weekend, that shantytown.  If the Ultimate Actress was a little confused when the infamous Supreme Leader who’d just been threatening her with some sort of blood-based initiation ritual turned out to be really excited about painting sets with his boyfriend, she didn’t let on.

Shuichi squeezed Kokichi’s arm after she walked away.  They started up their Yu-Gi-Oh! game, again, and Kokichi acted appropriately surprised when Shuichi won…  Right on cue.


	2. The Costumes We All Wear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Welcome back~ I hope you enjoy the chapter, if you read it!! I just really like the idea of them putting on a play, ahaha. :D This mysterious space prince play definitely isn't based on anything real, but I imagine Hope's Peak might go kinda over-the-top with stuff like special effects? Especially during the Talent Development Plan deal, when there are both an Ultimate Inventor and an Ultimate Mechanic running around...
> 
> Have a wonderful day!!

Rehearsals for the Ultimate Actress’s play had been going on for a while before Shuichi and Kokichi finished up the moon desert shantytown.  They had barely scrubbed the paint off their hands – (and out of their hair, in Kokichi’s case…  Though Shuichi wasn’t really sure how he’d managed to get so splattered in the stuff until he heard whispers of an attempted “Paint Fight” while he’d slipped out to the bathroom) – before they were hurried over to help build the tyrannical space palace’s frame out of wood and a couple spiral staircases that could be shoved around the stage on wheels.  Yes, Kokichi’d tried racing them, but only once or twice…  He stopped after he almost put a hole through the underground lake oasis Himiko Yumeno and Tenko Chabashira were painting.  That might’ve been mostly because Tenko chased him into the vents for a while after that, of course, and the Ultimate Actress got really disappointed.

Also, Kokichi’d had to eat his and Shuichi’s lunch with a vent between them, that day – still hiding from Tenko’s neo-aikido and the threat of _even more detention_ if the teacher in charge of coordinating theater stuff managed to catch him while they still remembered why they were so angry.  Kaito Momota leaned against the wall next to Shuichi, eating with them too, just then, and he’d joked that this whole set-up was sort of like practice for when Kokichi got himself tossed in prison or something.  Kokichi was pretty quiet for a second, after he said that.  When he spoke next, it was all scheming-voiced and bragging about the tons and tons of prisons he’d broken out of before.  _“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Detective Saihara.  I’ll be back in action before you even miss me!”_

Sometimes Shuichi forgot about the way the rest of their school saw his boyfriend.  It was easy to forget, getting dragged around town with D.I.C.E. and watching Kokichi’s actual “criminal activities.”  It wasn't so diabolical to use Silly String on stuff, or mess with arcade games so he could play for free, or any of the other shenanigans Kokichi got involved with to make a point or show D.I.C.E. a good time.  Maybe he’d get banned from a bunch of game rooms, and he’d definitely be fined for property damage…   But high-security, vent-like prison for life?  Probably not, unless Kokichi's reputation and what he _could_ have done mattered more than anything else.

It was easy to forget that at school people didn’t usually laugh or play along when Kokichi told his lies.  Well, Shuichi did, sometimes.  Kaito looked at him with his eyebrows raised way, way up when he did, though, and he kept asking if Shuichi was okay.  Not being blackmailed or harassed by random secret organization henchmen, right?  Not just scared out of his wits?  Kaito said Kokichi wasn’t so scary.  Said he could probably take ‘im – which was all well and good, except most people probably remembered which one of them had won in their sports day mock fight a while back.  Miu Iruma _had_ recorded the whole thing, after all, complete with her own enthusiastic commentary.

“A fluke!  Definitely!” Kaito said about all that – about the fight, and Kokichi’s fluid, laughing combat style. And maybe it was.  Still, the whole thing just left Shuichi wondering where Kokichi’d learned to fight so well.  What exactly was lurking around in his past that D.I.C.E. hadn’t clued him into just yet.  There had been hinted things, of course.  Old scars Kokichi told wild stories about, grinning dramatically or asking if he was shadowy and mysterious enough yet.  But Shuichi trusted that someday those hinted things would become solid, for him.  Shuichi _also_ told Kaito he trusted he could hold his own in actual fights, and Kaito clapped him on the back and huffed out a “ _Thank_ you.”

Their shantytown for the musical was all rolling purplish red hills and alien beast skulls cooking under the heartless space suns, by the time it was done, anyway; the palace was going to be built of mirrors and fake purple jewels Tsumugi the Ultimate Cosplayer had whipped up in her mysterious workshop.  The whole play was taking shape around them night after night, and Shuichi had caught himself humming Kokichi’s solo villain song as he made his way around campus more than once.  It was a jaunty, swaggering song, and there were a few breaks for wild-eyed, bent-over-himself diabolical laughter scattered throughout.  Kokichi made a show of it every time they practiced, holding out a finger to his space princely attendants like, _“Wait just a minute, dammit!”_ before he got back to the song, or clearing his throat self-consciously when he was done and taking a beat to remember what exactly he’d been singing about.

Kokichi pretended he wasn’t very good at holding still when the Ultimate Artist Angie Yonaga practiced his stage makeup on him, too, sometimes – to make people laugh, really, and so she could complain about him to her Student Council friends when they dropped by.  It was the same as the way Kokichi pretended he didn’t want to do little errands for the rest of the crew, when Shuichi knew he loved being able to bring everybody coffee or whatever…  Kokichi smirked when people were surprised that he remembered their orders; Kokichi joked about poisoning everything, even the little stir-y straws and napkins, and he whined about how he should be treated a little better, here, being the goddamn space prince and all.

Shuichi watched the crew being unsure what to make of Kokichi Oma – trying to figure out just how seriously they should take this Ultimate Supreme Leader, with all his antics and his sing-song threats and over-the-top stories – and he grinned to himself about it without really meaning to…  Or he shook his head over at Kokichi like, _“What are we going to do with you?”_   It still felt like a relatively new experience, being in on the joke like this.  Being in on the way Kokichi wore his title around like its own sort of costume, even while he was stealing the heroine’s fake sword and trying to coax anybody at all into play-fighting him.

(Kaito almost took him up on that, actually, before the Ultimate Actress tried to climb up onto the balcony he was supposed to hammering into place.  And then, “Not done yet!” he’d yelped.  “Hey!  Don’t break your neck or anything, c’mon.”)

People had called Shuichi the Ultimate Detective before they’d ever seen him investigating a crime scene, or combing through his uncle’s cases for him in the middle of the night with bitter, lukewarm coffee on his tongue and blue computer light making his eyes sting.  People had expectations about what “Ultimate Detective” meant before they knew anything about Shuichi at all, or had even googled the Saihara Detective Agency’s name.  Everybody had to wear the costumes – wear the roles they’d been given – somehow, at Hope’s Peak Academy.  It was just their choice _how_ to wear them, and whether or not to text their practical joke-inclined boyfriends little “Help Me” messages when some stranger’s detective questions got to be a bit much.

Maybe Kokichi’s games had baffled Shuichi, before – like talking to the Ultimate Supreme Leader left him running around in a maze, exhausted and not sure if there even _was_ a way out…  But now, Shuichi thought he was learning to tell when Kokichi was putting on his role, with or without a little nudge in the ribs or a drawling, _“Relax, Mr. Detective!”_ With or without his pirate-y space prince boots, too.

Hope’s Peak Academy had a few very fancy theaters, but Shuichi had grown to know _theirs_ like the cluttered filing cabinets back in his uncle’s detective agency, by now.  It was still a little surreal watching it transform itself into Kokichi’s corrupt desert space moon, though.  Towards the end of things especially, as the show was creeping up on them and pretty soon no one would let Kokichi play with the drills and saws and stuff in the tech theater closet anymore.  There were fog machines that smelled like baking sun and strange, fizzing chemicals – there were gauzy, eerie lighting systems rigged up, and of course the squishy organic-sounding whirr of Kokichi’s mechanical slime army oozing its way around the stage.  The actors transformed themselves too, piece by piece, as Tsumugi Shirogane finished up their costumes.

The heroes had their scuffed gear and their tinted bronze goggles and their air tanks for crawling around in the dreary space-mines trying to reach that underground oasis Tenko and Himiko had been painting to life, earlier.  They had wigs and dramatic alien face paint; they had battered-looking swords and exposure suits that wouldn’t completely hide their faces when they had to do scenes out in the desolate wastelands.  Kokichi had a costume that fit perfectly over the costume-self he already wore to school – the act he put on for kicks, for security, to make a point…  For whatever it was that had made him so okay with everybody thinking he could send a bunch of goons to drag them away in their sleep.  Which, you know.  The dastardly space prince actually _did_.

Kokichi didn’t have to wear a wig for his role – he was still in white and black and purple, actually, though his cape was very short and silky and he had a lot of fun swooshing it dramatically at people.  He had fake daggers tucked into almost every piece of clothing, too, which was supposed to be one of the show’s running gags.  Shuichi watched Angie Yonaga paint on Kokichi’s makeup – watched Kokichi hide behind jagged, knowing eyebrows and silvery purplish scales – and thought just a little about his own costume.  How he’d been branded by his detective talent, by his quiet voice, by the way he’d worn his hat pulled low over his face.  People saw so many things when they looked at him.  Someone telling Kokichi he looked scary – looked dangerous and wicked – and him taking it as a compliment…  It made sense.  That was part of the act he was going for.  Part of it – not _all_.  If someone got to know Kokichi and thought his jokes at school were all there was to him, maybe that just meant they’d never be in on those jokes.  Maybe Kokichi was okay with that.

It was sort of the same way Kokichi called Shuichi himself things like “Noble” and “Goody Two-Shoes,” even when they both knew that didn’t have to be the whole story.

Not completely.  Not every time.

People always saw costumes – the pieces of someone else they were being given to see.  Sure.  Kokichi was still Kokichi under all the play-threats and villain monologues and space prince makeup.  He was the same as he always was, whatever lies he told.  However he shifted on the surface.  Kokichi winked at Shuichi, actually, when he noticed him watching the makeup session…  And then almost immediately started fiddling with his eye because he’d messed something up, there.  A fake scale hadn’t settled right before he’d started throwing winks around, or something.

There had been a time Shuichi wouldn’t have believed he could trust the guy underneath Kokichi Oma’s contradictory self.  The guy under all the costumes, who’d wanted to wink at him or wave cheerfully or call out some sort of smarmy joke to make sure they were all good.  To make sure Shuichi knew he was okay.

That time felt so long ago, now.  Shuichi winked back, awkward and with his arms folded around himself, and Kokichi – encouraged, probably – decided to try convincing Angie to do Shuichi’s space makeup, too.  Shuichi was going to be at the ticket desk during the actual show, but no one said an alien couldn’t work the ticket desk!  Obviously.  Loopholes.  Bam.

Shuichi laughed nervously, and Kokichi kicked his heels on the ground and wheedled.  Angie told him to sit still and let everything dry, _please_ , and then she turned to Shuichi with a cunning brightness in her eye.  Next thing Shuichi knew, the Ultimate Artist had him sitting down with a smock on.   She was stirring up her paints and chirping about how _maybe_ she’d just paint up all the other tech crew students, next.


	3. Showtime!  Again and Again and Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again~ Thank you so much for reading this fic!! I hope the ending is fun - I definitely had fun writing it. :D
> 
> Have a great day!! I don't exactly have anything witty to say here, but... A wild fic chapter appeared??

Shuichi didn’t get to actually watch as much of the Ultimate Actress’s play as he might have liked, that first night – he was standing guard at the ticket booth for the beginning part, after all, and stumbling around in the back helping move set pieces where they needed to go for the rest.  He’d seen Kokichi getting hurried around in his costume and makeup, though, and he’d watched him pretend to forget all his cues, too…  Asking wide-eyed, innocent questions about when exactly he was supposed to come on, again, probably just to watch panic wash over the Ultimate Actress’s face.  And  _then_ , of course, to watch the moment when all that panic melted away into arm-swatting understanding.  Kokichi was just playing.  She could tell that, now.

“Don’t mess this up, Oma,” the Ultimate Actress told her hand-picked diabolical space prince.  She was using a friendly voice, now, though, like Kokichi’d managed to take her mind a little off the former Ultimate Actress waiting up in the velvety auditorium seats.  Like she’d gotten to understand Hope’s Peak Academy’s Ultimate Supreme Leader somewhat better, by now, through all his new fake scales and swaggering royal space boots.  Shuichi was pretty sure he’d heard Kokichi’s D.I.C.E. teammates say stuff like,  _“Dang it, Kokichi!”_  and  _“Hey, careful – do you want me to crash this thing, boss?” _in really similar voices, actually.

“Heh, you got it!” Kokichi’d drawled, then.  He’d stood up on his toes and kissed Shuichi’s cheek before they led him away to wait for his first scene – the one where the space prince was monitoring his radioactive, probably-haunted desert mines.  He left silvery makeup smeared across Shuichi’s skin – on purpose, probably, so Shuichi’d be scrubbing it off even after he was exiled to the ticket stand – and cackled something about how Shuichi should definitely not forget to hand out some of the prank tickets his nefarious gang had made along with the real ones.  The Ultimate Actress called _“No prank tickets!”_ from halfway across the stage, and then that was that.

Or…  That probably  _should_  have been that.  Shuichi did end up handing out a couple of Kokichi’s fake tickets, honestly – but only to D.I.C.E. members who’d shown up disguised as Reserve Course students.  One of them gasped, slapping her hand over her mouth, and another one giggled about how cute it was that the detective boy actually remembered them.

“Oh hey – remembered you from what?” Kaito Momota had asked, from his station as an official door-holder a few feet away.  He was grinning and warm – probably pretty excited to meet actual friends of Shuichi’s – and wearing a nice tie.  His hair was slicked down strangely, too…  Shuichi thought maybe his grandmother had helped him fix it up.  One of Kokichi’s D.I.C.E. members spun some lie without even taking a second to breathe – something about them all going to the same “old person water aerobics thing” with Shuichi’s uncle.  Just to try it out, apparently.  All the flapping around underwater and/or pool floaties involved had looked interesting!

Kaito nodded thoughtfully, after all that, and got Shuichi to promise to teach him a little water aerobics at their next exercise session.  So, that looked like something Shuichi was going to have to learn pretty quickly.  Kokichi’s D.I.C.E. members punched him playfully on the shoulder and waved a lot before heading into the auditorium.

Shuichi was sort of relieved that people who actually knew Kokichi – knew him and rooted for him and could act out whole scenes from different comedies he liked – would be watching the Ultimate Actress’s play, even if he couldn’t.  Kokichi wasn’t completely buried under so many masks, just now, a stranger in a room full of people who thought they already understood everything they needed to know about him.  “Evil Prince” was right there next to Kokichi’s name in the play’s program, after all.  He would be sticking his tongue out at the heroes and encouraging the audience to boo and hiss at him like in some kind of vaudeville stage play, soon enough, and at least when D.I.C.E. booed and hissed at their leader they were doing it with love.  Doing it in about the same way as they’d buy him ice cream after the show let out, and make him watch recordings of his own singing voice until he joke-threatened to throw their phones out the car window.

And you know, Shuichi would be going with them, too.  He was supposed to help pack up the props and ticket tables and everything, and then he was going to hop in D.I.C.E.’s van out back.  He was part of the team, D.I.C.E. had assured him.  Kokichi would be coming home triumphantly to him just the same as any of his faithful minions, right?

“Right,” Shuichi’d said.  He’d been surprised how completely he meant that, but he really shouldn’t have been, after all this time.

There was going to be another show the next night, and then a matinee on Saturday…  Shuichi would get to see a lot of the play in pieces, before it was all over.  All over and they were starting to break down the set – all over and Kokichi was grinning cheekily at the Ultimate Actress about how she could call him in for her next project, if she wanted.  He probably wouldn’t even need to take  _all_  her family’s assets, or anything!  Shuichi would watch a lot of the scenes from just offstage, out of the corner of his eye or peeking through bits of set he’d helped paint.  He’d get a backwards, glaring stage-light view of things; he’d notice when one of the heroes almost tripped during a desert sandstorm dance number, and he’d watch Kokichi’s maniacal tyrant-y expressions soften out as soon as he ducked behind the curtain.  It was a dusty, secretive world to either side of the stage.  Shuichi would climb in the rafters above things, and wheel a castle around with Kaito’s help, and help chase down missing costume hats.  The play would come together for him in a patchwork of crooked, dreamlike scenes.

Except for Kokichi’s first solo song on that first night, mind you.  Angie Yonaga came by to help Kaito with some set adjustments, around the time  _that_  scene was supposed to start…  And then she and Kaito both shoved Shuichi over to the backstage exit, telling him to go watch this one for real.  Go lurk in the back of the theater, or something.  Go hang out with those loud water aerobics Reserve Course friends.  It didn’t matter, so long as Shuichi got back to help direct all those gelatinous slime soldier mechanisms before the end of act one.

Later, Kokichi would say he had seen Shuichi just barely, through the glow of the stage and the sea of faces and the rolling ominous smoke of the “bad guy song” set design.  He would say it had meant a ton to him that Shuichi would be willing to creep past people in the dark to watch him sing something he’d already heard practiced five billion times – he knew how much Shuichi would hate to step on anybody’s toes.  Shuichi wouldn’t exactly believe Kokichi’d seen him, mind you.  Kokichi hadn’t met his eyes or anything as he sang, he didn’t think, and he hadn’t flashed him a little wave or a jokingly rude gesture or anything.  But what mattered was the “thank you,” there.  What mattered was how Kokichi murmured, “Aw,” in a low, quiet voice when Shuichi said he was genuinely glad he’d gotten to watch him the way the rest of the audience did, at least for a little bit.

Even if Kokichi was lying, then, the heart of everything there – the gratefulness, the fact that he would  _want_  to see Shuichi through the crowd – was all completely true.  And you know what?  Maybe Shuichi had just missed Kokichi’s little nod, or something.  Stranger things had happened so far as the Ultimate Supreme Leader was concerned, for sure.

Shuichi stood in the dark as the rolling, chemical mist swept around onstage and the lighting took on a sugary purple glow.  Kokichi’s cues. He was strolling along the balcony of his ominous space palace, now, as the lights settled on him; he was twirling that bottle of poison he’d use in the next act, tossing it so it caught the light and then catching it as if it barely mattered at all.

Kokichi the space prince told his audience about all the awful, melty things poison like that could do to a person if they just _happened_ to drink a little of it with their well water.  Bubbling guts, sticky-oil intestines, a choking death.  Ha!  Kokichi scuffed his feet on the balcony as the jaunty music trickled in and he started singing/cackling about his schemes. His woes.  His fearsome space slime army.

Maybe Kokichi really _did_ see Shuichi through the crowd?  There were so many students gathered around there - students and faculty and the former Ultimate Actress herself smiling sort of wistfully into her hand.

All of Hope’s Peak Academy... All of that struggling, eager world…  Was made up of a thousand little performances.  So many titles and expectations, so many costumes and futures.  For _this_ performance, at least, though, Shuichi would get a glossy program designed by the Ultimate Artist herself to take home with him. Shuichi already knew he was going to hang the play’s program somewhere in his room, probably, or else tuck it into one of the drawers of his new desk in his uncle’s detective office.  Keep it close, even while he was learning to wear his new costumes better and better as time went by.  Playing his roles so often, maybe he’d even start to believe in them, someday.

Shuichi wasn’t about to tuck the program away anywhere yet, though.  Not until he saw what sort of expression Kokichi Oma – his boyfriend, the Ultimate Supreme Leader, the most feared prince in all fake high school musical space – made when he was asked to scribble out his autograph somewhere on the front.


End file.
